The Russian national Wheelchair Rugby team is going to participate in the B Division European Championships

08 October 2018

The Russian national Wheelchair Rugby team is going to participate in the B Division European Championships in Lahti (Finland) from 7th to 15th
of October.

Eight teams will take part in the second-level of the continental championship - in addition to the “host” of the tournament - the Finnish national team will also compete for the medals Austria, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Russia.

The Russian team performs in the composition:

- Valery Krivov (city of Moscow),

- Dmitry Zbanatsky (city of Moscow),

- Ivan Tsibulsky (city of Moscow),

- Sergey Erkin (city of Moscow),

- Anton Vinokurov (Moscow region),

- Ilya Myslyaev (Kemerovo region),

- Dmitry Khamov (city of Moscow),

- Vladimir Tsvetkov (Moscow region),

- Artem Ishin (city of St. Petersburg).

Sergey Glushakov, the head coach of the Russian national wheelchair rugby team, commented on the participation of the national team in the upcoming tournament:

«We reached the B Division after winning silver medals at the European Championships in C Division last year.

In addition to us, moved up to a higher level the Netherlands team, which defeated us in the final championship last year and the Czech Republic team, which became the third in C Division, but enriched this tournament after the refusal of the Belgian team to participate.

In the subdivisions we are going to fight with the teams of Switzerland, Ireland and Italy. Among them, we have never met only with the Irish team, the other two teams are known to us - Switzerland was our opponent in the control tournament in Denmark, and we defeated the Italian at the European Championship in C Division in 2016.

The upcoming tournament in Lahti is a kind dead line for our team to further qualification for the upcoming Paralympic Games: 2 of the strongest teams of the European Championship 2019 in A Division will get to Tokyo, and from the B Division only the first 2 teams will enter the A Division”

Wheelchair rugby is a game between two teams of four players each. The sport debuted in 1996 at the Atlanta Paralympic Games. The goal of each team is to score points by touching or crossing the opposing goal line with a ball that is being controlled. There are possible the following actions with the ball: passing, throwing, hitting, twisting, dribbling or moving with it in any direction limited by the applicable rules. The winner team is the one with the most points by the end of the game.